With the proliferation of casual and peer-to-peer rental services, customer damage to a vehicle is an area of concern. In a traditional rental setting, the rental facility inspects a vehicle upon return, or at a minimum, a next customer taking delivery of the unit inspects the vehicle. With peer-to-peer and do-it-yourself rental, a customer often obtains the vehicle from and returns the vehicle to an unattended parking lot or city street parking space. There is typically no person to record the condition of the vehicle as it is returned. If any damage occurred, it is hard to determine when the damage happened and who caused it.
Wary customers may record, photograph and note possible damage, but it is difficult to prove when certain damage occurred (except maybe to prove that a person first documenting the damage did not cause the damage). In a scenario where five or six people use a vehicle in a day, many users may use the vehicle between any formal recordation of damage. Even if a rental agreement requests that a customer document damage, many customers may not take the time to document a vehicle condition prior to drive-away. And even if a customer initially agrees that they may be liable for undocumented damage, that same customer is likely to strenuously object if the vehicle owner attempts to charge that person for damage that person believes they did not cause.